Caprice and Rondo (80 page)

As authorised, Mick Crackbene had sailed round the French coast past Brittany and, as expected, had met there the
Peter
, once of that very place, with Paúel Benecke in command. Benecke had been drunk. He had tried to race Crackbene’s ship into port.

‘And?’ Father Moriz had said at that point, with impatience. Father Moriz was not tolerant of self-indulgence.

‘And the
Peter
sank,’ Crackbene had explained with simplicity.

There had been a silence. Some years ago, a Vatachino ship called the
Fortado
had suffered a similar fate, having incurred the displeasure of Nicholas. Tobie had said, ‘You sank her?’

‘A vessel with a beam of forty feet, a length of a hundred and seventy, and three hundred crewmen? I suppose I could have done,’ said Mick Crackbene, pausing to reflect, ‘but I didn’t. She wrecked herself on the rocks. A treacherous coast.’

‘I remember,’ Diniz had said, with irony. ‘But Paúel Benecke managed to survive?’

‘All of them did. He’s a good seaman. He’ll get another boat soon.’

‘Will he? How?’

‘He has plans,’ Crackbene had said casually. ‘He thought he might not go back to Danzig. Woman trouble. Hanse trouble too, I expect. He knows Ochoa is dead and the gold lost, so there is nothing to wait for. He thought he might go to Seville, build a caravel, and offer himself for a bit of trading down the coast. Down the African coast. Down where the Portuguese used to have a monopoly.’

‘Trading in gold?’ Diniz had said. And then, ‘How would he raise the money to build his own ship?’

‘He didn’t tell me in so many words,’ Mick Crackbene had said. ‘But I think he mentioned insurance.’

This deserved, and received, some slow applause, during which John found himself exchanging a long look with Gelis. When he turned, he had found Crackbene’s eyes on them both. After that, Crackbene had watched him a lot.

Now, sitting studying Gelis on the last evening before he went back
to war, the engineer spoke in his own language, bluntly. ‘You’re certain sure Nicholas is still alive. But you canna sense that he’s divining?’

She didn’t avoid the question, or the subject. ‘I think he’s alive. He may not be able to divine. He needs quiet, and a pendulum.’

‘Could he divine where David de Salmeton is?’ John said.

‘He would want to,’ Gelis said. ‘He could do nothing about it. I can’t understand, as it is, why de Salmeton hasn’t come after us: you, myself, Jodi, Kathi, Tobie, Crackbene. Even to taunt us.’

He had thought about that himself. He said, ‘It wouldna give him as much satisfaction without Nicholas here, or at least knowing about it. I think de Salmeton’ll stay where he is, waiting for Nicholas to make a move in the spring, or be found. Then, if we don’t warn Nicholas of his threats, de Salmeton will. He wants to lure Nicholas home.’

‘I wondered,’ said Gelis. After a while she said, ‘If he could, he would come. I was thinking of it when Crackbene was here. Nicholas would come, but whatever he did about de Salmeton, he couldn’t stay. And rather than go back, now that so much has changed, he might be tempted by Benecke. He might choose to go on to Africa, and make a life for himself, sailing and trading. Slaves. Gold. Exploring the coast. The spices of India, maybe, one of these days. Fighting off the Spanish, the English, the Portuguese. Perhaps fighting off Jordan de Ribérac, and Simon his son, and even young Henry, his grandson. That was what Mick Crackbene was thinking, too.’

‘It’s possible,’ le Grant said. Mention of de Ribérac reminded him just how much he disliked that fat nobleman and his spoiled grandson Henry. John le Grant had personally fought against the grandfather at Trèves, and had nearly found himself killed while trying to teach the boy gunnery. He could understand Nicholas being tempted to retaliate. But not, surely, on Benecke’s ship. He said, ‘I wouldna say Crackbene dotes on the notion of Nicholas drinking his way round to India in another man’s ship. And for sure, he doesna love David de Salmeton. He took time to mention to Benecke that Ochoa’s precious puckle of gold had been lifted by David from Cyprus.’

She was sitting upright. ‘He did? So that Benecke …’

‘So that, if David de Salmeton is sailing anywhere, he would be well advised,’ John said, ‘to look out for pirates.’

It was daft, of course. She examined him, and then smiled and said, ‘They’ll never meet, will they? But it makes me feel better, imagining it.’ She seemed to hesitate. She said, ‘Will you be back? In the spring?’

‘It might be difficult,’ he said. ‘But all the others are here.’

‘I know. I am lucky,’ she said.

J
ULIUS
,
DESCENDING
upon Moscow at last, found himself in a ducal city of low wooden cots and squat Russians. His resentment was hardly dispelled by the helpful welcome he received from Dymitr Wiśniowiecki, from whom he learned, to his further irritation, that Nicholas had already arrived. Nevertheless, by the time he and Anna had been installed in their inferior lodging, with stables, in the old merchant quarter of Kitay-Gorod, his spirits had lifted.

‘They’re in prison!’ he had exclaimed, shutting the door on the Russians and joining the exquisite bundle of furs that was Anna, huddled before the smoking, newly lit stove. Happily convulsed, he sank his arm round her. ‘Nicholas and the Patriarch. Representatives of the heinous Roman church, from which Orthodox believers must be protected. The Metropolitan took one look at them and stuck them into quarantine in the Troitsa.’

In Rome, the Cardinal Bessarion had trained the future Grand Duchess Zoe-Sophia in the Latin mode of worship, to which it was hoped she would convert her untutored husband, leading to a union of the Greek and Latin churches. Much, unfortunately, had depended on her personal charms, but there seemed no reason for total despair: she had two daughters already, and might be about to carry a son.

‘Upon which Ivan will convert out of gratitude, and the Patriarch and Nicholas will be freed? Poor things,’ Anna said. ‘I think we might try to release them before then.’

‘I’ll go and see them,’ said Julius vaguely. He felt better about being stranded in Moscow. The prospects were not as bad as they looked. There were a lot of merchants about, some from Poland and Germany. There was an engineer from Bologna he knew, and a goldsmith, and an elderly compatriot of the Grand Duchess’s from the Morea whom Nicholas would certainly recognise. Julius looked forward to telling him when he saw him.

Anna’s cheek settled into the curve of his shoulder. He cast an oblique glance, to note how her furs opened. Even to have his arm round her felt strange. They had been apart for more than a year, and had been travelling ever since his knock at the caves. Finding one another again, they had been silent in their relief. Later, although never alone, they had fallen into talk as they always did, exchanging news, making tentative plans. He had not rebuked her, nor questioned her over anything she had done, and she had not interrogated him. He didn’t believe — he never had believed — what Nicholas had baited him with in the Tabriz menagerie. He supposed that neither he nor Anna had spent the separation in quite the way the other expected, but so far as congress with Nicholas was concerned, he trusted her, as he had said, as if he had God’s assurance.

When he found how the furs unfastened, and she didn’t object, he
went on to determine how everything else opened as well, and they ended up on the straw by the stove which was quite warm by then, although not as inflamed as they were: at one point, he thought he was dying. It had never been quite like this, since the night they decided to marry. She, fought him, devoured him, denied him until he was out of his mind with desire; then forced a climax that lasted so long he almost fainted. Then later, it began all over again.

He performed well, for he had much to make up for, but that night he was unable to match his magnificent wife. He was not ashamed. He couldn’t remember when he had ever been so exhausted with pleasure. And all his doubts were set to rest.

Two days later, he made the thirty-mile ride to the walled town of the lavra of the Holy Trinity and St Sergius, the largest and richest of Moscow’s defensive circle of fortified monasteries. Permission had not been easy to get: he was accompanied by a compulsory armed escort and Dymitr, who had insinuated himself as his interpreter. Anna had been forbidden to come: except for the Grand Duchess herself, women were not allowed at the Troitsa unless for rare festivals. The place for well-bred consorts in Muscovy was at home in the terems, where they spent their days sewing, spinning, and embroidering without soiling their hands.

They said that the Grand Duchess was in the course of changing all that. They said she was in the course of changing the habits of Ivan Vasilievich her husband, who paid grovelling tribute to the Tartars, and sprawled in drunken slumber at table, and lounged in sloth on his throne while others fought to preserve his realm. Zoe-Sophia, daughter of Imperial Byzantium, would not approve of that. Julius thought that she and Anna would get on well together.

It entertained him that Nicholas proved to think so as well, being already deep, when he found him, in plans for founding a business in Russia that would take the place of the promising Caffa emporium now lost. It was not hard to locate him, as one armed escort gave way to another, and Julius, with Dymitr beside him, was led over a frozen stream, through a portico and into a vast enclosed territory where diverse snow-burdened buildings of wood, brick and stone threw back the muffled
ting tang
of metal on metal, and the lowing of animals, and the cries of the labouring servants and workmen in their sheepskin caps and hide jackets. The monks themselves, in their tall hats and shawled robes, were either low-voiced or silent, and tramped the clogged wooden paths alone, or in clusters, bent like black barrel staves against the white of the snow. The cathedral, high against the grey sky, exuded incense, and the thrum and pipe of industrious chanting, such as you would hear in a rope-walk, or a finishing-shed, or on a good working vessel at sea. Musical instruments were not allowed in the lavra.

Privacy was not allowed, either, to visitors. A pair of bearded monks, hands tucked in sleeves, attended the vaulted stone chambers in which were incarcerated the two suspect Friazines: the Latin priest Ludovico da Bologna, so-called Patriarch of Antioch, and his large Frankish companion from Bruges. The invigilation did not, however, appear to be too severe: the sound of animated and agreeable conversation emerged as Julius and Dymitr crossed the threshold. The monks were ejaculating and smiling, and the Patriarch and Nicholas were arguing with one another in Russian, which Julius did not understand. Father Ludovico, his lips moving rapidly, was seated with a spare cassock over his knees, darning a hole in the skirt, and Nicholas, watching him, was replying. He appeared, as Dymitr had reported, fully recovered, and broke off immediately to jump up and give Julius a welcome. ‘I heard you got here. And Anna? She’s well?’

‘Yes, you dog,’ said Julius with meaningful malice; and was delighted to see Nicholas pull one of his faces.
That
for the Tabriz menagerie.

‘Well, I hope you’re hungry,’ Nicholas said. ‘Brother Gubka and Brother Ostafi have arranged a feast for us. In the inner room. Here.’

As prisons went, it was not unacceptable, and as guests, they received meat and wine. Also, in his disingenuous way Nicholas had arrived at a system of communication which satisfied the rules of the lavra while preserving some discretion. Among themselves, they spoke Russian. When Julius entered the conversation, Nicholas replied to him in Flemish, and translated both sides of the dialogue into Russian. If he missed a few items in the translation, Dymitr gave no appearance of noticing and the monks couldn’t tell.

Later, reporting to Anna, Julius recalled all he could of the talk. ‘It was mostly about setting up business. He’s been busy, and has found some good trading contacts in the monastery itself. To develop it properly, we’d need to visit the Hanse halls at Novgorod to set up an agent, but that’s only eight days away, so long as we travel in winter, by sledge. Once that is done, the best time to leave Russia altogether is in January or February, when the snow is still firm. Then we can catch the March ships at Danzig.’ Until he spoke to Nicholas he had assumed that they would have to wait until the spring.

Anna said, ‘Would they let him go to Novgorod with us?’

‘He thinks so,’ said Julius. He had waited, while she thought. She was a good planner. But when she spoke, it was about something different.

‘Did you tell him about the letter from Brother Huon?’

The letter had come to Caffa in March, too late to catch Nicholas, already expelled and on his way south to Tabriz. She had opened it. She had wanted very much to break the news to Nicholas herself, but had left Julius to do it.

He had not minded: he was deeply curious to know what Nicholas thought of Thibault de Fleury. In effect, the news of his death seemed to move him hardly at all. He read the letter, which Julius had handed to him with his condolences, and then folded and put it away. Julius, disappointed, had probed. ‘He says he’s sending the vicomte’s boxes to Gelis.’

‘So I saw. She visited him. How did you find out where he was?’

He had been surprised, for Anna, surely, had been explicit. ‘You know. Jan Adorne visited the monastery with his father. He heard the vicomte was there. He told me about it at Rome.’

‘You didn’t ever see him, then?’

Julius had stared at him. ‘My God, no! Don’t you think I would have told you if I had! We all thought the old fellow was senile. I didn’t think you would thank me for news of him. It was Anna who thought you should know.’

‘Then I have to thank you both,’ Nicholas had said. ‘And I do thank you. If you hadn’t told me, he would have died and I should never have known.’

‘But you didn’t learn any more about anything? About your childhood?’

‘No,’ Nicholas had said. ‘And I’m glad. I’d rather leave it alone. I want to work with you, and forget it.’

Repeating this, Julius caught Anna in a small grimace. ‘I don’t think he truly meant that,’ she said. ‘I wish I had been there. That news must have been sad for him. I told you what happened when his grandfather’s letter arrived. I saw his face then.’